Friday, March 30, 2007

So I had a toothache, and I figured I ought to go to the dentist. Before going, I go real quick and sign up for some extra plan on my student health insurance because it promised that it was very likely that it would cover "up to" 50% on dental work. It cost like $25, I think. So, I wind up going to the dental school because it will be cheaper anyway, and they pull two of my teeth out after taking some x-rays, and charge me some money, and I wait to see if the insurance will cover anything. A while ago a very nice lady at the dental school calls me to basically tell me that the insurance won't cover anything. I have to pay for all my tooth-pulling, which is fine with me, but I paid $25 for nothing. I sure am an idiot.

Monday, March 12, 2007

So, I've been rerunning this program I designed last month. It takes a random 256 pixel square out of each of 4212 images in a calibrated database of photographs. It determines which of 108 frequency-space filters would give the biggest response to that sub-image. That's 9 frequencies (the lowest and two highest never have maximal responses, but they're there as buffers so no energy is ignored). For some reason, I wrote the spectral filtering function so that it would return the filter coefficients in a 108 entry vector instead of a 12x9 matrix. I don't know why I wrote it this way. This means that every time I want to do something different with the data in the driver function, I have to sit and think again about how to find the right entry in the vector. This is really irritating, but I don't go back and slightly rewrite the analyzer function, because I don't want to do a bunch of back-and-forth fixing to adjust for the function fix. I leave the function messed up and go ahead and just make things difficult for myself in handling the output data. I don't know why. Also, my tooth-hole hurts.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Argo: Somebody always says that. What bothers me is that I keep saying that the last week has gone by really fast. I mean, every week recently, I keep saying that.

Bellboy: Have you? I think I have too.

Argo: It seems like I said it last week, and that then I was really struck by how quickly I had gotten from Monday to Friday. It seemed odd. But then, I remembered that I had thought the same sort of thing the week before. Now here I am again, thinking the same thing again.

Nina: Maybe there's something wrong with your brain.

Bellboy: Like you've gotten miscalibrated somehow. Maybe time seems the same as it always has seemed, but you've started comparing it with months, or two-week periods.

Argo: That doesn't make sense. Why would I do that?

Bellboy: I don't know.

Nina: Yeah, what's your point, Argo?

Argo: My point is, I don't like it. It makes me feel like if time is shorter, less has gotten done. And it worries me that if it keeps up, pretty soon I'll lose track of the weeks altogether. I kind of feel like I'm already starting to do that.

Nina: Maybe you just can't remember anymore. You're getting old.

Argo: You mean, like, I can't remember as much from the previous week, so it seems smaller?

Nina: Maybe. Or you really are doing less, so there's less to remember.

Bellboy: Or, what you're doing from week to week is getting more and more the same as what you've done the previous week, and so it just seems like what you remember from this week is an old memory.

Argo: But that's the opposite of "time flies when you're having fun", right? If what you're doing is entertaining and new, time passes quickly; if it's boring time goes slowly.

Nina: Maybe the saying is wrong.

Bellboy: Maybe it's that if what you're doing requires little new thought, time seems to go more quickly. Maybe remembered time is measured in thought-hours. Sometimes fun things are easy things, which don't require a lot of thought. If you're sitting in a waiting room with nothing but 'no smoking' signs to read, there's nothing to do but think, and so time seems to drag on.

Argo: So I haven't been thinking recently? So I'm not consuming enough thought-hours?

Nina: Or, you're forgetting how much you've thought about. Or maybe you just haven't done anything but stand outside and smoke and talk about stupid boring nonsense with your coworkers.

(Nina leaves)

Argo: Maybe I've reached a new level of thought; I do so much hard, serious thinking that it's automatic, and it takes no effort. I'd have to think about what I was thinking about to actually remember the time spent thinking. Maybe I should be writing it down.

Bellboy: I'm sure that's it, Argo. You're full of crap.

(Bellboy leaves)

Argo: Maybe I'm getting old, and I'm going to die soon. That would be good.